ABSTRACT

Looking at a diverse range of texts including Marilyn French's The Women's Room, Philip Roth's Patrimony, the writings of Walter Benjamin and Fredric Jameson, and films such as Cinema Paradiso, Susannah Radstone argues that though time has been foregrounded in theories of postmodernism, those theories have ignored the question of time and sexual difference.

The Sexual Politics of Time proposes that the contemporary western world has witnessed a shift from the age of confession to the era of memory. In a series of chapters on confession, nostalgia, the 'memories of boyhood' film and the memoir, Susannah Radstone sets out to complicate this claim. Developing her argument through psychoanalytic theory, she proposes that an attention to time and sexual difference raises questions not only about the analysis and characterization of texts, but also about how cultural epochs are mapped through time.


The Sexual Politics of Time will be of interest to students and researchers of time, memory, difference and cultural change, in subjects such as Media and Cultural Studies, Sociology, Film Studies.



chapter |19 pages

Introducing time

chapter 1|36 pages

On confession

chapter 2|56 pages

Confession, time and sexual difference

chapter 3|47 pages

The sexual politics of nostalgia

chapter 4|33 pages

Nostalgia, masculinity and mourning

chapter 5|31 pages

Remembering ourselves